They glared narrowly at each other as they reached the Cottonwood Hotel, a nice-looking, two-story establishment. While the blood brothers got along quite well most of the time and had for many years, it wasn’t unheard of for the two of them to clash. A time or two, they had gotten so mad at each other that they split up and rode separate trails for a while. They had always come back together eventually, but who was to say whether or not one day their trails might fork for good?
Not today, though, not over something as minor as this. They went into the hotel and got a couple of rooms, Sam paying for both of them since he usually kept their cash.
Matt looked through an arched entrance that led into a smaller room off the lobby and saw several men sitting around a table playing poker. “You’ve got a card room,” he said to the clerk.
That slick-haired, bespectacled gent nodded. “That’s right. When all the saloons closed, folks still needed a place to play, so Mr. Winston, the owner of the hotel, made a card room out of that storage room.”
“High-stakes games?”
“Well, more friendly, I’d say,” the clerk replied. “But from what I hear, the pots sometimes get pretty big. Two or three hundred dollars, even.”
Those weren’t huge pots as far as Matt was concerned, but they weren’t penny-ante, either. If a man spent a few hours in a game like that, he might walk away with enough cash to buy quite a few supplies.
He inclined his head toward the card room and said to Sam, “I think I’ll have a look.”
“Give me your gear,” Sam said. “I’ll put it in your room.”
“Thanks.” Matt handed over the saddlebags and Winchester. The momentary friction of a few minutes earlier was forgotten.
He strolled over to the door and stepped into the card room. Since it was a converted storage room, it didn’t have any windows, but paintings had been hung on the walls. Three of them sported scenes of the English countryside, while the fourth painting was of a well-upholstered gal with bright red hair and absolutely no clothes. One hand and a long, flowing strand of hair covered up the essentials.
Five men sat at a table covered with green felt. Matt eyed the lone empty chair. To the players who glanced up at him, he gave a friendly nod, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to distract anybody from their cards.
A handsome, brown-haired man in a gray suit with fancy vest, white shirt, and a cravat with a diamond stickpin in it was handling the deck, as well as playing his own hand. The bet went around the table as the players discarded and drew, then went around a couple more times until the only ones left in were the dealer and a bald-headed man with a big belly and a second chin. Matt tipped his hat back, leaned against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest, and watched the play. He didn’t know what either man had, so he tried to decide by studying their faces if they were bluffing or not.
When there was about eighty dollars in the pot, Double-Chin called the bet and put down his cards. He had a good hand, three nines, but the other man beat him with a straight.
As the brown-haired man raked in his winnings, he smiled up at Matt and said, “Interested in sitting in on the game, friend?”
“You’ve got an empty chair,” Matt pointed out.
“Indeed we do. Pull it up.” The man glanced around the table. “That is, if no one else has any objections.”
A couple of the men shook their heads, one grunted in assent, and another said, “Fine by me.” The only one who didn’t respond was the fat man, who was still frowning at the table as if he couldn’t believe that he had lost the last hand.
Matt sat down at the table and took out a twenty-dollar gold piece. He had been saving the double eagle for a moment like this. As he tossed it onto the green felt, he said, “Is that enough for me to buy in?”
“More than enough,” the brown-haired man said. “Like me to change that for you?”
“I’d be obliged.”
The man counted out some greenbacks from the pile in front of him and pushed them over to Matt, who handed him the double eagle. “I’m Linus Grady, by the way,” the man introduced himself. “That’s Ted Barnes, Seward Stone, Walt Phillips, and Gus Blauner.”
“Matt Bodine.” Judging by the lack of reactions around the table, none of the men had heard of him, which was just fine with Matt. Sometimes having a reputation as a fast gun was just an annoyance, and sometimes it was a downright danger. None of these men looked like the sort who’d be interested in challenging him just to get a reputation of their own, though. They were more interested in playing cards.
“The game is straight draw poker,” Linus Grady said. “Two-dollar ante. Sound all right to you, Matt?”
“Sounds fine. Deal ’em.”
Grady began flicking the pasteboards around the table with a practiced ease that said he was a professional. As Grady dealt, the fat man, who had been introduced as Seward Stone, continued to glare at him.
Matt told himself to keep an eye on that one. If there was going to be trouble, it was likely to come from Stone.
Chapter 6
The game went smoothly for a few hands, though. Stone seemed to get over being mad about losing that good-sized pot to Grady. The pots stayed relatively small, under fifty dollars, and Matt won several of them.
Then a pot started to rise as several of the players seemed to think they had good hands. Either that, or some of them had decided to run a bluff. Matt was confident that Stone wasn’t bluffing. The big man wasn’t quite good enough to hide his emotions completely. Excitement lurked in his piggish eyes.
With Grady, on the other hand, Matt didn’t have any idea. The man was a professional, and the vaguely pleasant smile never left his face. He was unreadable.
As for Matt’s own hand, he liked it. On a whim, he had tried to fill a flush on the draw, and two spades had turned up to go with the three he already had. He kept his raises conservative, though, knowing that if he plunged it would just run the other players off before the pot built up.
Seward Stone didn’t have that much patience. When the bet came to him, he saw it and raised twenty, and when it came back around, he raised fifty. Matt kept his face expressionless and didn’t show his annoyance. Everybody else dropped out except for him, Stone, and Grady.
He would just have to take more of the fat man’s money, he told himself.
Or else Grady would. Matt couldn’t rule out the possibility that the brown-haired man had him beat. Either way, all he really had at stake was the twenty dollars he had brought to the table. Soon, though, that was in the pot, too, as he pushed everything he had left into the center of the table and said, “I’m all in, gents.”
Stone smiled, but his mouth still looked like he was pouting. “In that case, I raise another fifty.”
“I’ll see that,” Grady said as Matt felt a surge of disappointment. He couldn’t afford to stay in.
But then Grady went on. “And so will Matt.” He tossed more bills into the pot.
“Wait a minute,” Matt said, and at the same time, Stone exclaimed, “By God, you can’t do that!”
“Of course I can,” Grady said calmly. “I can loan money to anyone I want to.”
Stone pointed a sausagelike finger at Matt. “He was all in. He said so himself.”
“He was mistaken.” Grady smiled at Matt. “I want to see your cards, amigo, so you’re calling the bet.”
“You sure about that?” Matt asked.
“Positive.”
“It’s not the way things are done,” Stone sputtered.
“This is a friendly game,” Grady said. “I don’t think we need to stand on ceremony too much.” He looked at the other men. “What do you gents say?”
“I say this is between the three of y’all,” one man responded. “I dropped out a long time ago.”
“So did I,” another man put in as he started to scrape his chair back. “But if there’s gonna be trouble, I think I’d just as soon mosey on.”